Kindness begets kindness. There are few human beings so totally depraved, desperately wicked as some may be, who cannot be aroused into appreciation of kind treatment. I have never met with one who could not. So harshness in a superior begets harshness in an inferior; and constant fault finding either arouses anger from its injustice, or paralyzes all effort to do well. As are the manners of those who lead, so are the manners of those who follow. As a matter of policy, to restrain crime without regard to the teaching of religion, those who have charge of convicts should be gentle and humane. XIX. DISCOMFORTS, AND THE END. A very few days after I entered the institution, I gave up looking for any consideration from any one but the Deputy. It was a rule of the place to shift every labor, when it could be effected, by the one to whom it belonged, upon some other person. That is, in the female department. The example set by the Head Matron was considered worthy of imitation, and copied with an accuracy deserved by a better one. To impose upon an officer, ignorant of the ways of the place, was a favorite entertainment of some of the others. They commenced to hand me along from one to another when I wished for things to use, or for information, giving me a long chase to find it; but a short time, only, was required to extinguish that entertainment. I refused to take orders or information from any one but the Deputy. My inquiries of him, and statements of what I had been told, exposed them. They got reproof instead of entertainment, which, of course, created resentment that vented itself in a thousand of those little annoying inventions in which unamiable women are so ingenious. The reprisals Mrs. Hardhack made did not always redound to my inconvenience alone,--my women came in for a share in the retaliation. A new Receiving Matron was told to take no trouble about the dresses of my women in the kitchen,--it was no matter how they looked. The shorter she kept them, the better the Master would like it. The less they had to wear the more money would be saved to the institution. In consequence, dresses sufficient to make them decent were withheld. I made a statement of some of these things to the Deputy. He said,-- "The Matrons have been in the habit of settling those small matters among themselves." "So we might if either of us had the authority to dictate. If Mrs. Hardhack has the authority to control, and gives the order that my women are to go dirty and ragged, as you see them, I appeal to you. Just look at them as you see them now. Those dresses are all they have, and I can get no better without an order from you." He looked at them. The angry color flashed into his face, and his teeth were set together. In about two hours tidy dresses were sent in to my women. I went on,--